Single and multi-color LED strips provide illumination and ornamentation for safety, emergency preparedness, alerts, accent lighting, and pedestrian and vehicular navigation. Flexible LED lighting strips are commonly used to enhance the aesthetic appeal of vehicle interiors and exteriors, as backlights for signage, to provide soft light for make-up mirrors, as emergency lighting in stairwells, to define passenger walkways inside aircraft, busses, trains, and shuttles, to indicate step heights and other structural boundaries, and as digital and/or analog status indicators and alerts for computers and other electronic systems.
Presently known LED strips typically comprise a linear array of individual LEDs embedded within a flexible strip. The terminal end of the strip includes connective lead lines (wires) extending from the strip, to which predetermined voltage signals are applied to thereby power one or more color channels (typically red, green, blue, and optionally white). When installed into the operating environment, the lead wires may be soldered or otherwise electromechanically coupled to corresponding conductive pods of an LED controller, either directly or via an interface connector. The LED controller includes a suitable microprocessor, such as the SAMD21 ARM® Cortex® −MO+ series of microcontrollers available from Microchip Technologies under the tradename Atmel SMART™ SAM D21.
Presently known LED controllers are disadvantageous in that they often require ad hoc programming I/O and mounting hardware, driver circuitry, and heat sinks, none of which are defined by current IEEE or other industry standards. As a result, the design and installation of LED strips and associated LED controllers can be cumbersome and time consuming.
Moreover, presently known LED controllers typically require a housing to which thermal energy generated by the device is transferred. This limits the manner and environment in which LED controllers may be installed.
LED controllers and associated installation assemblies and methods are thus needed which overcome the shortcomings of the prior art.